You know, I just have to say....I miss the 1990s.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

Last edited Thu Nov 8, 2018, 04:09 PM - Edit history (1)

Looking over the headlines and I see 13 people dead in a mass shooting, Trump firing his Attorney General and replacing him with a lackey, Trump shouting like a madman at a press conference, Trump revoking press credentials of journalists, Trump using doctored video from conspiracy sites, Ruth Bader Ginsberg getting injured, just wall-to-wall craziness....

...and then I think.....


September 6, 1995.

Do you know what the main headline on all the nightly news shows on September 6, 1995?

Do you know what the major, number one news story of the day was on September 6, 1995?

I'll tell you.

On September 6, 1995, the top, number one national news story of the day was that Cal Ripken Jr. played in his 2,131st consecutive baseball game, eclipsing the long held record of Lou Gehrig which at one point was thought to be unbreakable .

That wasn't just the top news story on ESPN. It was top on CNN, ABC, NBC, and CBS.

A baseball game was the top news story of the day.

The President was there to watch the game. But not just that. The Vice President was there as well.

Yes, the main concern of the two most powerful men in the country that day was to go and watch a baseball game.

I miss that sense of calmness.

I don't want to oversimplify things too much because lots of serious stuff besides baseball games did take place in the 90s.

We had the Oklahoma City bombing, and the war in the Balkans, and the Rwandan genocide, and the LA riots, and numerous other things of concern.

But as a whole, it was nowhere near as crazy as where we find ourselves today, and we kind of took it for granted.

We spent over a year seriously, seriously obsessing about a single murder trial simply because the person on trial was a former football star.

Our major political scandal of the decade was the president's lack of candor when it came to having a personal affair, and all the jokes that went along with it, because even then we realized it how silly it actually was in the long run.

And even when the news was earth shattering, it was isolated. We all remember Columbine and the 13 people shot that day. But it felt like a generational event, something that was so out of the ordinary.

And yet just in the past month, we've seen 13 people shot dead in a bar in California, 11 people shot dead in a synagogue in Pittsburgh, 3 people shot dead in a yoga studio in Tallhassee, and 2 people shot dead in a supermarket in Kentucky.

Oh yeah, and then there was the lunatic mailing out bombs to high profile Democrats and media organizations.

Is it just me, or were the 90s really a relative respite of calm compared to what we've seen, really since September 11th 2001 and especially since November 9, 2016?

[zipplewrath]

1. The first World Trade Center bombing

One we shouldn't forget.

February 26, 1993

In an odd way, that bombing drove changes to the building and procedures that probably saved alot of lives in 2001.

[LisaM]

2. I remember the 90s fondly, too. (I also remember that game - I left work for about half an hour...

to go to a local restaurant and watch Ripkin set the record - I ordered a glass of iced tea, drank it, and went back to work).

It was the one time in my life when my economic situation VASTLY improved. Seattle was still a quirky place to live, and downtown still had Elliott Bay Books and lots of live music. A lot of the top movies were rom-coms. People weren't all surgically attached to cell phones. I was on a couple of list-servs and posted online in a couple of forums, but only on my breaks at work because no one had smart phones, but in general, I saw a lot more of my friends in person and had live phone conversations almost every day. The recreational sports leagues in Seattle were thriving and if you drove around, you could almost always see some softball or soccer games in progress.

Yes, there were some dark spots, and I guess omens, too, but the government at the time was well aware of Bin Laden and passed the information directly to the Bush administration, which dropped the ball.

Really, we've lived through some of the worst presidents of all time in my lifetime (Nixon, Reagan, George W. Bush, and now this looney toons), so the sane periods do take on a romantic glow in retrospect.

[dewsgirl]

3. Ahh 1995. I was 18 years old and had no idea I was growing up in, what would be considered such

an innocent time. We were excited about upcoming technology, I loved my pager. 2020 felt like a million years away. Columbine was still 4 years away. It makes me extremely nostalgic, to think back to this fairly innocent time for our country.

[Freddie]

4. I was the mom of little kids

In 1995 they were 9 and 5. Little league games, piano lessons...yes a more innocent time. Used to enjoy reading the paper every day. It still exists but thinner and less “substantial”, plus I can read the same stuff online.

[malchickiwick]

5. I remember the 1990s pretty well...Lots of homophobia and misogyny, as I recall...

Same-sex marriage was a lifetime away, it felt like; medical cannabis was a pipe dream (pun intended); sexual harassment was the rule, not the exception; etc. etc. etc. ...and not to mention the Red Sox did not have four titles in 14 years.

It is great to idealize the past, but I feel like we are moving forward to a better country despite the trumpsters trying to drag us backward.

[Tommy_Carcetti]

6. I remember a slow but noticable cultural shift towards equal rights for gays in the 90s.

Granted, things like civil unions might seem antiquated these days but they were a significant step in the right direction nonetheless. You begin to see television shows and movies like Philadelphia that didn't just treat gay characters like laughing stocks. There was a definite sense that things were moving forward back then.

And despite being unsuccessful in stopping Clarence Thomas, the Anita Hill hearings did raise significant awareness towards sexual harassment that we didn't see previously. To think that the attitudes in the 90s were no different than the 50s or 60s is foolish.

Also, screw the Saux. (Sorry, that one just came out.)

The 90s were not perfect by any means, but they did feature this oddly placid time after the Cold War had ended but before the War on Terror erupted, where we began to become more connected via the internet but were not overwhelmed by it, and where the economy was legitimately good and we could spend our time thinking about things that weren't so earthshakingly significant.

[Zing Zing Zingbah]

7. I'm fond of the 90's because I was a teenager/young adult then.

I think most people enjoy that time in their lives. Clinton was a good president too.

I think we have an whole lot more crazy going on now because of on going problems that have not been addressed. Republicans refuse to do anything about mass shootings. Republicans don't want to do anything about the cost of health care and drugs. Republicans don't want to do anything about making sure working Americans make a living wage. Republicans don't want to do anything about climate change. They are the do nothing party and they have had far too much power to stall on progress for the last two decades.

[anarch]

8. it was sort of a Golden Age, between the fall of the wall and the fall of the towers

An idyllic period that we didn't recognize at the time...there was much promise for the world to collectively evolve and make true social progress after the end of the Cold War (might as well call it November 1991); much of that promise died in the fire and dust and horror of Sept. 11, 2001, and the beginning of the endless, extremely profitable Global War on Terror that began at that point.